Florida business grades: Good, but room for improvement

For the No. 10 best state to do business in nationwide, Florida sure has some work to do.

The Sunshine State earned that score in a recent 10-category survey compiled by CNBC Global, the CFO Council and the Young Presidents Organization.

While Florida earned As in access to capital (a surprise in mostly venture capital-starved Florida) and technology and innovation, it also got a D+ in education and a C- in quality of life. Then there was the C+ in cost of doing business: Florida’s national rank there, No. 31, was two spots lower than even Illinois, which normally embraces taxes and regulations like a snow plow in February.

The survey, in total, scores all 50 states on 64 metrics across 10 categories of competitiveness, according to the CNBC report. The report assigns a weight to each of the 10 categories by analyzing every state's economic development marketing materials. The more a state cites a particular category as a selling point, the more weight it carries in the report. So workforce and infrastructure, for example, are worth significantly more in the report in most states than, say, access to capital and business friendliness.

In addition to education, quality of life and cost of doing business, Florida was also subpar in cost of living, with a C score. On the flip side, its A grade in technology and innovation includes a jump from No. 28 last year to No. 7 in 2018.

No surprise, Texas, the standard-bearer for most national best-of business-related surveys, scored the No. 1 spot on the CNCB report. Georgia and North Carolina, business-friendly states that Florida often competes with for corporate relocations, also made the top 10, at No. 7 and No. 9, respectively.